echoes of a city that's long overgrown
by misguideddreamer
Summary: He will not allow himself to love her. eric/snow


He wants her with an intensity that scares him.

He is not supposed to be feeling like this, he thinks as he falls into the welcoming arms of liquor once more.

Not when he can still remember how she looked when she laughed, and the memory of kissing her cold corpse still haunts his fitful sleeps.

He will not allow himself to feel this way.

.

Eric is a glutton for self punishment. He stands behind her with his axe held aloft as she sits on her throne, carefully crafting a new world with her fingers in that dark room with its high ceilings and large windows, that still smells of rot and desperation.

He hangs back as he watches her walk with William in her free time, even though she tells him a hundred times, _ I trust him, _with a small hand resting on his forearm, raven head tilted back to watch him with a little laugh that wavers every now and again.

William is good for her, that much becomes clear to him very quickly. The small folk adore him, and the promises of grain and plentiful harvests he brings to the land. More than the smallfolk, she likes him. He watches her smile up at him from beneath his lashes, and sucks down the bitterness that has gathered in a tightly knotted lump inside his throat.

Try as he might, he cannot find it in himself to be jealous. Bitter- yes, always, it is an emotion ever present in his view of the world that dealt him such a painful card. Angry- at William, sometimes. Sometimes he acknowledges that William is better for her that he is; they say you never forget your first love, and William is definitely hers.

He remembers sitting around the fire with her in the dark woods, after everyone had gone to sleep. She had ash on her face, which was illuminated by the soft glow of the fire, and she talked of William with a soft voice he has never heard her use again.

_He was my first love,_ she said, idly sifting through dirt to pick up a twig to roll between her fingers as she spoke.

She looked ethereal with the flames dancing across the length of her face, and he remembers choking out no more than a gruff reply in answer to her question.

Snow turns to smile at him from her seat on the throne and he almost drops his axe.

.

He does not belong here in this world of glittering dresses and sparkling tiaras. _This is Snow's world,_ William tells him one night when they are watching her dance with some lord from somewhere, _she was born and bred for this. This is where she is meant to be._

The fact he is not supposed to be here is left unspoken.

Eric turns and leaves the ballroom, determined not to look back.

He does anyway.

She's watching him.

.

_Are you unhappy here?_ She asks one night when he walking with her in the depths of the castle, the soft breezes of summer filling the halls with warmed air.

_No,_ He replies, arm jumping to the back of his neck as it always does when he is nervous, or out of his depth. _You need me here, to keep you safe. _

_I need you,_ she echoes, and he looks at the firelight from the candles slanting in the hollows of her cheeks as she looks up at him with wide brown eyes.

She looked like that a while before- skin so smooth it was stone, lips colourless against the pallor of her face. He stood above her then, ready to kill anyone that touched her.

He kissed her, and left. There were words whispered then that he knows he will never repeat again for her ears, but knows that in saying them he has resigned a piece of his soul to her.

That desperation is what keeps him there by her side, and what convinces him that he will remain by her side no matter what she does. It is what he felt when she lay there good as dead, when the soul he had pieced together so carefully with her at his side shattered, and he was left a broken shell of a man once more.

It's not fair, he thinks first, and then as the months pass and summer gives way to a fiery autumn, he realises he probably needs to get over her.

He can't- he won't let go of her, but maybe taking steps towards not being so consumed by her is the right way to do things.

.

The girl from the village is pretty. She reminds him of times before, times he vowed to forget. They sit in the tavern where the barmaid still knows his order because he used to come here so often, and they go through the motions of dating.

She tucks a strand of auburn hair behind her ear and bites her lip, and he can't help but feel like her hair is the wrong colour.

_Listen, _she tells him when they have sat their for an hour making small talk that is stilted but not altogether unsolvable. He just needs time, Eric tells himself.

_You love her. _Cora rubs her fingertips against the rough wood of the table and avoids his gaze, which has suddenly become ten times more thunderous.

_You don't know what you're talking about. _He stands abruptly and leaves, ignoring her calling his name.

He will not allow himself to love her.

.

They get into an argument- a big one, one with shouting so loud she drags them to her room and shuts the door with a snap.

He doesn't even know what they're fighting about- something about him being stupid and he doesn't remember, but he knows that this is a year's worth of pent up aggression spilling from him

Snow is angry in a way that reminds him of how she was in the forest, filled with frustration she hadn't yet found out how to control. She steps in front of him and slams her palms into his chest that shatters his trance.

_Stop pretending you don't see it!_

Then she drags her lips onto his.

He kisses her back.

.

**a/n title from heartlines by fatm. I don't know what this is. Just feels. **


End file.
